{"id":18580,"date":"2013-01-15T00:02:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T05:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=18580"},"modified":"2013-01-15T00:02:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T05:02:16","slug":"spending-cuts-in-washington-are-not-like-actual-reductions-in-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/01\/15\/spending-cuts-in-washington-are-not-like-actual-reductions-in-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Spending cuts&#8221; in Washington are not like <em>actual<\/em> reductions in spending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2013\/01\/14\/spending-cuts-are-mostly-fiction\" target=\"_blank\">A. Barton Hinkle<\/a> clues us in on how to save big in our budget plans:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Would you like to save $20,000 this year? Of course you would. Here\u2019s how: Plan a month-long vacation to Disneyland, and budget $20,000 for the trip. Then don\u2019t go. Presto! You just \u201ccut\u201d your family budget by 20 grand.<\/p>\n<p>This sounds absurd \u2014 because it is. Yet that is precisely how Washington operates.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago, President Obama claimed on national TV that \u201cI cut spending by over a trillion dollars in 2011.\u201d But as many people quickly pointed out, in fiscal 2011 federal spending rose from $3.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. Nevertheless, the President repeated the claim on Jan. 2, insisting that \u201clast year we started reducing the deficit through $1 trillion in spending cuts.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>What he meant was that in 2011 he agreed to \u201ccut\u201d spending in future years, in much the same way canceling a future vacation \u201ccuts\u201d your own budget. It is a fiction necessary to sustain the president\u2019s pose that he wants a \u201cbalanced approach\u201d to deficit reduction.<\/p>\n<p>That is also nonsense. Take the midnight deal to avert the fiscal cliff, which the White House says will reduce the deficit $737 billion. Of that amount, $620 billion comes from raising taxes. Some balance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A. Barton Hinkle clues us in on how to save big in our budget plans: Would you like to save $20,000 this year? Of course you would. Here\u2019s how: Plan a month-long vacation to Disneyland, and budget $20,000 for the trip. Then don\u2019t go. Presto! You just \u201ccut\u201d your family budget by 20 grand. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,13],"tags":[158,697,698,71,118],"class_list":["post-18580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-budget","tag-congress","tag-debt","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4PG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18589,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions\/18589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}